"Leiber,.Fritz.-.Conjure.Wife" - читать интересную книгу автора (Leiber Fritz)

_8:58:_ Norman reached over and switched on the light, winced at its glare. Tansy ducked her head.
He stood up, massaging the back of his neck.
"The thing that gets me," he said, "is the way it invaded every nook and corner of your life, bit by bit, so that finally you couldn't take a step, or rather let me take one, without there having to be some protective charm. It's almost like --" He was going to say, "some kinds of paranoia."
Tansy's voice was hoarse and whispery. "I even wear hooksand-eyes instead of zippers because the hooks are supposed to catch evil spirits. And the mirror-decorations on my hats and bags and dresses -- you've guessed it, they're Tibetan magic to reflect away misfortune."
He stood in front of her, "Look Tansy, whatever made you do it?"
"I've just told you."
"I know, but what made you stick to it year after year, when as you've admitted, you always suspected you were just fooling yourself? I could understand it with another woman, but with you. . . ."
Tansy hesitated. "I know you'll think I'm being romantic and trite, but I've always felt that women were more primitive than men, closer to ancient feelings." She hurried over that. "And then there were things I remembered from childhood. Queer mistaken ideas I got from my father's sermons. Stories one of the old ladies there used to tell us. Hints." (Norman thought: Country parsonage! Healthy mental atmosphere, not!) "And then -- oh, there were a thousand other things. But I'll try to tell them to you."
"Swell," he said, putting his hand on her shoulder. "But we'd better eat something along with it."
_9:17:_ They were sitting facing each other in the jolly red-andwhite kitchen. On the table were untasted sandwiches and halfsipped cups of black coffee. It was obvious that the situation between them had changed. Now it was Norman who looked away and Tansy who studied expressions anxiously.
"Well, Norman," she managed to say finally, "Do you think I'm crazy, or going crazy?"
It was just the question he had needed. "No, I don't," he said levelly. "Though Lord only knows what an outsider would think if he found out what you'd been doing. But just as surely as you aren't crazy, you are neurotic -- like all of us -- and your neurosis has taken a darned unusual form."
Suddenly aware of hunger, he picked up a sandwich and began to munch it as he talked, nibbling the edge all around and then beginning to work in.
"Look, all of us have private rituals -- our own little peculiar ways of eating and drinking and sleeping and going to the bathroom. Rituals we're hardly conscious of, but that would look mighty strange if analyzed. You know, to step or not to step on cracks in the sidewalk. Things like that. Now I'd say that your private rituals, because of the special circumstances of your life, have gotten all tangled up with conjure magic, so you can hardly tell which is which." He paused. "Now here's an important thing. So long as only _you_ knew what you were doing, you didn't tend to criticize your entanglement with conjure magic any more than the average person criticizes his magic formula for going to sleep. There was no social conflict."
He started to pace, still eating the sandwich.
"Good Lord, haven't I devoted a good part of my life to investigating how and why men and women are superstitious? And shouldn't I have been aware of the contagious effect of that study on you? And what is superstition, but misguided, unobjective science? And when it comes down to that, is it to be wondered if people grasp at superstition in this rotten, hate-filled, half-doomed world of today? Lord knows, I'd welcome the blackest of black magic, if it could do anything to stave off the atom bomb."
Tansy had risen. Her eyes looked unnaturally large and bright.
"Then," she faltered, "you honestly don't hate me, or think I'm going crazy?"
He put his arms around her. "Hell, no!"
She began to cry.
_9:33:_ They were sitting on the davenport again. Tansy had stopped crying, but her head still rested against his shoulder.
For a while they were quiet. Then Norman spoke. He used the deceptively mild tones of a doctor telling a patient that another operation will be necessary.
"Of course, you'll have to quit doing it now."
Tansy sat up quickly. "Oh no, Norm, I couldn't."
"Why not? You've just agreed it was all nonsense. You've just thanked me for opening your eyes."
"I know that, but still -- don't make me, Norm!"
"Now be reasonable, Tansy," he said. "You've taken this like a major so far. I'm proud of you. But don't you see, you can't stop half way. Once you've started to face this weakness of yours logically, you've got to keep on. You've got to get rid of all that stuff in your dressing room, all the charms you've hidden around, everything."
She shook her head. "Don't make me, Norm," she repeated. "Not all at once. I'd feel naked."
"No you won't. Youil feel stronger. Because you'll find out that what you half thought might be magic, is really your own unaided ability."
"No, Norm. Why do I have to stop? What difference does it make? You said yourself it was just nonsense -- a private ritual."
"But now that I know about it, it's not private any more. And in any case," he added, almost dangerously, "it's a pretty unusual ritual."
"But couldn't I just quit by degrees?" She pleaded, like a child. "You know, not lay any new charms, but leave the old ones?"
He shook his head. "No," he said, "it's like giving up drink -- it has to be a clean break."
Her voice began to rise. "But, Norm, I can't do it. I simply can't!"
He began to feel she was a child. "Tansy, you must."
"But there wasn't ever anything bad about my magic." The childishness was getting frightening. "I never used it to hurt anyone or to ask for unreasonable things, like making you president of Hempnell overnight. I only wanted to protect you."
"Tansy, what difference does that make!"
Her breasts were heaving. "I tell you, Norm, I won't be responsible for what happens to you if you make me take away those protections."
"Tansy, be reasonable. What on earth do I need with protections of that sort?"
"Oh, so you think that everything you've won in life is just the result of your own unaided abilities? You don't recognize the luck in it?"
Norman remembered thinking the same thing himself this afternoon and that made him angrier. "Now Tansy --"
"And you think that everyone loves you and wishes you well, don't you? You think all those beasts over at Hempnell are just a lot of pussies with their claws clipped? You pass off their spites and jealousies as something trivial, beneath your notice. Well let me tell you --"
"Tansy, stop screaming!"
"-- that there are those at Hempnell who would like to see you dead -- and who would have seen you dead a long time ago, if they could have worked it!"
"Tansy!"
"What do you suppose Evelyn Sawtelle feels toward you for the way you're nosing out her flutterbudget of a husband for the Sociology chairmanship? Do you think she wants to bake you a cake? One of her cherry-chocolate ones? How do you suppose Hulda Gunnison likes the influence you have acquired over her husband? It's mainly because of you that she no longer runs the Dean of Men's office. And as for that libidinous old bitch Mrs. Carr, do you imagine that she enjoys the way your freedom-andfrankness policy with the students is cutting into her holier-thanthou respectability, her 'Sex is just an ugly word' stuff. What do you think those women have been doing for _their_ husbands?"
"Oh Lord, Tansy, why drag in that old faculty jealousies business?"
"Do you suppose they'd stop at mere protection? Do you imagine women like that would observe any distinction between white magic and black?"
"Tansy! You don't know what you're saying. If you mean to imply -- Tansy, when you talk that way, you actually sound like a witch."
"Oh, I do?" For a moment her expression was so tight her face looked all skull. "Well maybe I am. And maybe it's lucky for you I've been one."